The private K-12 school for boys announced the completion of its big campaign on Friday during a reception for 450 alumni, parents and friends at its Hunting Valley high school campus.

Jonathan Bridge, assistant headmaster for advancement, said the campaign is one of the five largest in the dollar amount raised by any private day school in the United States, and the only one in the Midwest to top $100 million.

Big chunks of the campaign, which included revved-up annual giving, plus donations for the school's endowment and construction projects, boosted teachers' salaries and financial aid.

Where the money went

University School used $40 million of the $108 million to pay for improvements at its lower school campus in Shaker Heights and at the upper school, but the changes at the latter have been most profound.

Project and school details

The project: $40 million in capital improvements at University School.

Major gifts: $12.5 million from Thomas Temple Keeler Foundation of Lufkin, Texas; $8 million from the Susan and Bill Oberndorf Foundation of San Francisco; $4 million from the estate of the late James Williamson of Canton; $3.5 million from Dan and Marge Moore of Cleveland; $2 million from Estate of the Cannon Family.

Average high school tuition: $27,000.

Percentage of students with financial aid: 37 percent.

Total amount of annual financial aid: $5 million.

Once sprinkled with windowless classrooms in a low-set, earth-hugging modernist brick building that dated to the late 1960s, the upper school now features a new, light-washed, $28 million academic wing plus renovated areas that show a greater connection to the surrounding landscape, plus a greater sense of welcome and arrival.

Other Centerbrook projects here include the Park Synagogue East building at 27500 Shaker Blvd. in Pepper Pike, completed in 2005, and the recently dedicated expansion and renovation of The Temple-Tifereth Israel's complex at 26000 Shaker Blvd. in Beachwood.

All three projects involve unique, attractive, finely detailed buildings, each of which has a bespoke look. Centerbrook is not repeating itself in Northeast Ohio.

But at University School, as at Park Synagogue, the firm made extensive use of exterior copper paneling that should eventually oxidize from dark brown to a handsome green.

A clearing in the forest

Set on 220 acres northeast of Shaker Boulevard at SOM Center Road, the Hunting Valley campus, where 427 boys attend classes in grades 9-12, still looks as if it's meant to occupy a forest clearing without calling attention to itself.

And on the inside, the high school still feels like a spartan, masculine environment with a strong, midcentury modern look.

Peter van Dijk, the leading Cleveland architect of the day, designed the school's original building, completed in 1969.

It was part of a series of important contemporary projects by van Dijk including the core campus buildings at Ursuline College in Pepper Pike (1966) and the award-winning Blossom Music Center (1968), which helped establish van Dijk's firm as a national leader in cultural facilities.

The interior centerpiece of University School's Hunting Valley campus is a rugged two-story staircase made of cast concrete in a style that evokes the "Brutalist" look popular in America in the 1960s and '70s.

With almost geologic solidity and weightiness, the staircase is a social crossroads, a center of gravity capable of imprinting memories on generations of students.

It also looks like it was intended to anchor the free-flowing, "open-plan" teaching, library, social areas and cafeteria that van Dijk designed around it.

Over the years, however, University School altered the original interiors, closing them in with windowless classrooms in certain locations, according to assistant headmaster Bridge.

Original spirit

The renovations to the 1969 building honored van Dijk's desire to create spaces that foster community and connection to the outdoors.

The new touches include a glassy new main entrance lobby, framed in wood, which rises to a three-story prow at the northwest corner of the school complex.

This gives the school a stronger main point of entry than the old front door, located off a driveway loop at the south side of the original 1969 building, which still serves as the student drop-off.

The new lobby, which faces west and southwest, catches ample afternoon sunlight, and is being used by the school as an art gallery to show off student creations.

The lobby leads to a new reception desk, to the school's nicely revamped art and music classrooms, to a big multipurpose Commons, and to the aforementioned stairwell and cafeteria.

As for the new academic wing, located just beyond the Commons, there's much to like.

Arcade and balcony

The three-story structure, which occupies a finger-like promontory on the north side of campus that used to be covered with trees, includes a ground-floor arcade and a second-floor balcony walkway on its south side, providing excellent views of new garden spaces and the school's nearby Lake Kilroy.

Inside the new wing, classrooms for the sciences and humanities flank a central corridor on three levels.

Each classroom has an outward-curving bay that bulges gently into the central hallway on every floor. The idea is to eliminate the monotony of walking down a traditional straight-walled, "double-loaded" hallway, with windowless rooms on either side.

Faced in warm-looking panels of white oak veneer, the curving classroom facades reveal the rounded concrete columns that support the building, creating a real-life demonstration of structure and engineering.

Better still, the classrooms have both internal and external windows, meaning that daylight penetrates from the outer windows on each side of the building into the central hallway.

Docking on the lake

Other grace notes at the upper school include a new canoe dock on Lake Kilroy, completed by staffer Dan Dickson, who leads special facilities projects for the school.

Made of weathered ipe wood, the dock has curved edges that fit the contours of the school's canoes, improving safety by eliminating gaps.

School Headmaster Ben Rein said he feels not just relief, but excitement about finishing the campaign and the construction projects.

University School's Hunting Valley campus still feels somewhat hidden in the woods. But if that's true, it also feels more like a hidden treasure.

Note: The story and photo captions have been corrected to reflect the proper name of Lake Kilroy.